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I'm curious, how many folders can be nested, and why? Is there a limit?

What I mean by nested is when folders are in this structure:

folder
 |_ folder
     |_ folder
         |_ folder
             |_ ...

Not like this:

folder
 |_ folder
 |_ folder
 |_ folder
 |_ ...

If there is a limit, is it set by the operating system, or by the file system?

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20

The limit will be the number of inodes on your partition since directories, like regular files, take an inode each.

Nothing would stop you from creating a directory inside a directory inside another directory and so on until you run out of inodes.

Note that the shell's command line does have a maximum length which can cause issues with really long paths, but it would still be possible to cd progressively towards the target file.

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  • 2
    Indeed, by experiment this is what mkdir -p does and it allows to exceed MAX_PATH. Such files can't be opened by their canonical path, but one can create them without problems.
    – DepressedDaniel
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 4:46
  • 1
    It's pretty logical, actually. A relative path starts at the current working directory, an inode. Inodes are not arranged hierarchically: there is no difference in this respect between a directory that is linked deep in the name hierachy and the file system's root directory.
    – Johan Myréen
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 8:04
  • 3
    @JuliePelletier The POSIX (and Linux) API defines a maximum PATH_MAX (4096 on Linux), that is much shorter than the maximum length of the command line. And while we are nitpicking: the maximum command line is not really a shell restriction. The limit is imposed by the argument vector length to the execve system call, and so applies to any program.
    – Johan Myréen
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 8:11
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    @JohanMyréen: Those are good observations but my point was that it would still be accessible relatively, no matter how deep it goes.
    – Julie Pelletier
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 8:50
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    @Arin Try df -i.
    – Johan Myréen
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 12:05

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